Among various diseases, cancer has become a big threat to human beings globally. Cancer is the second most common disease in India responsible for maximum
mortality of about 0.3 million deaths per year. This is owing to the poor availability of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease. Although
conventional chemotherapy has been successful to some extent, the main drawbacks of chemotherapy are its poor bioavailability, high-dose requirements, adverse
side effects, low therapeutic indices, development of multiple drug resistance, and non-specific targeting[1]. The main aim in the development of drug delivery
vehicles is to successfully address these delivery-related problems and carry drugs to the desired sites of therapeutic action while reducing adverse side
effects[2]. Functional nucleic acids, which can target cancer cells and realize stimuli-responsive drug delivery in the tumor microenvironment, have been widely
applied for anticancer chemotherapy[3]. At present, high cost, unsatisfactory biostability, and complicated fabrication process are the main limits for the
development of DNA-based drug-delivery nanocarriers. In this talk, I will discuss about newly developed DNA-based drug carrier, which can selectively target
tumor cells and deliver the drugs efficiently. The material exhibits a high biostability, making it a safe and ideal nanomaterial for in vivo application[4].